DESCRIPTION

The mfiutil utility can be used to display or modify various parameters
on LSI MegaRAID SAS RAID controllers. Each invocation of mfiutil con-
sists of zero or more global options followed by a command. Commands may
support additional optional or required arguments after the command.
Currently one global option is supported:
-uunitunit specifies the unit of the controller to work with. If no
unit is specified, then unit 0 is used.
Various commands accept either or both of the two options:
-d Print numeric device IDs as drive identifier. This is the
default. Useful in combination with -e to print both, numeric
device IDs and enclosure:slot information.
-e Print drive identifiers in enclosure:slot form. See next para-
graph on format details in context of input rather than output.
Drives may be specified in two forms. First, a drive may be identified
by its device ID. The device ID for configured drives can be found in
showconfig. Second, a drive may be identified by its location as
[Exx:]Syy where xx is the enclosure and yy is the slot for each drive as
displayed in showdrives.
Volumes may be specified in two forms. First, a volume may be identified
by its target ID. Second, on the volume may be specified by the corre-
sponding mfidX device, such as mfid0.
The mfiutil utility supports several different groups of commands. The
first group of commands provide information about the controller, the
volumes it manages, and the drives it controls. The second group of com-
mands are used to manage the physical drives attached to the controller.
The third group of commands are used to manage the logical volumes man-
aged by the controller. The fourth group of commands are used to manage
the drive configuration for the controller. The fifth group of commands
are used to manage controller-wide operations.
The informational commands include:
version
Displays the version of mfiutil.
showadapter
Displays information about the RAID controller such as the model
number.
showbattery
Displays information about the battery from the battery backup
unit.
showconfig
Displays the volume and drive configuration for the controller.
Each array is listed along with the physical drives the array is
built from. Each volume is listed along with the arrays that the
volume spans. If any hot spare drives are configured, then they
are listed as well.
showdrives
Lists all of the physical drives attached to the controller.
showevents [-cclass] [-llocale] [-ncount] [-v] [start [stop]]
Display entries from the controller's event log. The controller
maintains a circular buffer of events. Each event is tagged with
a class and locale.
The class parameter limits the output to entries at the specified
class or higher. The default class is ``warn''. The available
classes from lowest priority to highest are:
debug Debug messages.
progress
Periodic progress updates for long-running operations
such as background initializations, array rebuilds, or
patrol reads.
info Informational messages such as drive insertions and vol-
ume creations.
warn Indicates that some component may be close to failing.
crit A component has failed, but no data is lost. For exam-
ple, a volume becoming degraded due to a drive failure.
fatal A component has failed resulting in data loss.
dead The controller itself has died.
The locale parameter limits the output to entries for the speci-
fied part of the controller. The default locale is ``all''. The
available locales are ``volume'', ``drive'', ``enclosure'',
``battery'', ``sas'', ``controller'', ``config'', ``cluster'',
and ``all''.
The count parameter is a debugging aid that specifies the number
of events to fetch from the controller for each low-level
request. The default is 15 events.
By default, matching event log entries from the previous shutdown
up to the present are displayed. This range can be adjusted via
the start and stop parameters. Each of these parameters can
either be specified as a log entry number or as one of the fol-
lowing aliases:
newest The newest entry in the event log.
oldest The oldest entry in the event log.
clear The first entry since the event log was cleared.
shutdown
The entry in the event log corresponding to the last time
the controller was cleanly shut down.
boot The entry in the event log corresponding to the most
recent boot.
showfirmware
Lists all of the firmware images present on the controller.
showlogstate
Display the various sequence numbers associated with the event
log.
showpatrol
Display the status of the controller's patrol read operation.
showprogress
Report the current progress and estimated completion time for
active operations on all volumes and drives.
showvolumes
Lists all of the logical volumes managed by the controller.
The physical drive management commands include:
faildrive
Mark drive as failed. Drive must be an online drive that is part
of an array.
gooddrive
Mark drive as an unconfigured good drive. Drive must not be part
of an existing array.
rebuilddrive
Mark a failed drive that is still part of an array as a good
drive suitable for a rebuild. The firmware should kick off an
array rebuild on its own if a failed drive is marked as a rebuild
drive.
driveprogressdrive
Report the current progress and estimated completion time of
drive operations such as rebuilds or patrol reads.
drivecleardrive {start | stop}
Start or stop the writing of all 0x00 characters to a drive.
startrebuilddrive
Manually start a rebuild on drive.
abortrebuilddrive
Abort an in-progress rebuild operation on drive. It can be
resumed with the startrebuild command.
locatedrive {on | off}
Change the state of the external LED associated with drive.
The logical volume management commands include:
cachevolume [setting [value] [...]]
If no setting arguments are supplied, then the current cache pol-
icy for volume is displayed; otherwise, the cache policy for
volume is modified. One or more setting arguments may be given.
Some settings take an additional value argument as noted below.
The valid settings are:
enable Enable caching for both read and write I/O operations.
disable
Disable caching for both read and write I/O operations.
reads Enable caching only for read I/O operations.
writes Enable caching only for write I/O operations.
write-back
Use write-back policy for cached writes.
write-through
Use write-through policy for cached writes.
read-aheadvalue
Set the read ahead policy for cached reads. The value
argument can be set to either ``none'', ``adaptive'', or
``always''.
bad-bbu-write-cachevalue
Control the behavior of I/O write caching if the battery
is dead or missing. The value argument can be set to
either ``disable'' or ``enable''. In general this set-
ting should be left disabled to avoid data loss when the
system loses power.
write-cachevalue
Control the write caches on the physical drives backing
volume. The value argument can be set to either
``disable'', ``enable'', or ``default''.
In general this setting should be left disabled to avoid
data loss when the physical drives lose power. The bat-
tery backup of the RAID controller does not save data in
the write caches of the physical drives.
namevolumename
Sets the name of volume to name.
volumeprogressvolume
Report the current progress and estimated completion time of vol-
ume operations such as consistency checks and initializations.
The configuration commands include:
clear Delete the entire configuration including all volumes, arrays,
and spares.
createtype [-v] [-sstripe_size] drive[,drive[,...]]
[drive[,drive[,...]]]
Create a new volume. The type specifies the type of volume to
create. Currently supported types include:
jbod Creates a RAID0 volume for each drive specified. Each
drive must be specified as a separate argument.
raid0 Creates one RAID0 volume spanning the drives listed in
the single drive list.
raid1 Creates one RAID1 volume spanning the drives listed in
the single drive list.
raid5 Creates one RAID5 volume spanning the drives listed in
the single drive list.
raid6 Creates one RAID6 volume spanning the drives listed in
the single drive list.
raid10 Creates one RAID10 volume spanning multiple RAID1 arrays.
The drives for each RAID1 array are specified as a single
drive list.
raid50 Creates one RAID50 volume spanning multiple RAID5 arrays.
The drives for each RAID5 array are specified as a single
drive list.
raid60 Creates one RAID60 volume spanning multiple RAID6 arrays.
The drives for each RAID6 array are specified as a single
drive list.
concat Creates a single volume by concatenating all of the
drives in the single drive list.
Note: Not all volume types are supported by all controllers.
If the -v flag is specified after type, then more verbose output
will be enabled. Currently this just provides notification as
drives are added to arrays and arrays to volumes when building
the configuration.
The -sstripe_size parameter allows the stripe size of the array
to be set. By default a stripe size of 64K is used. Valid val-
ues are 512 through 1M, though the MFI firmware may reject some
values.
deletevolume
Delete the volume volume.
adddrive [volume]
Mark drive as a hot spare. Drive must be in the unconfigured
good state. If volume is specified, then the hot spare will be
dedicated to arrays backing that volume. Otherwise, drive will
be used as a global hot spare backing all arrays for this con-
troller. Note that drive must be as large as the smallest drive
in all of the arrays it is going to back.
removedrive
Remove the hot spare drive from service. It will be placed in
the unconfigured good state.
The controller management commands include:
patrolcommand [interval [start]]
Set the patrol read operation mode. The command argument can be
one of the following values:
disable
Disable patrol reads.
auto Enable periodic patrol reads initiated by the firmware.
The optional interval argument specifies the interval in
seconds between patrol reads. If patrol reads should be
run continuously, then interval should consist of the
word ``continuously''. The optional start argument spec-
ifies a non-negative, relative start time for the next
patrol read. If an interval or start time is not speci-
fied, then the existing setting will be used.
manual Enable manual patrol reads that are only initiated by the
user.
startpatrol
Start a patrol read operation.
stoppatrol
Stop a currently running patrol read operation.
foreignscan
Scan for foreign configurations and display the number found.
The config argument for the commands below takes the form of a
number from 0 to the total configurations found.
foreigndrives
Scan for drives flagged as foreign and display them.
foreignclear [config]
Clear the specified foreign config or all if no config argument
is provided.
foreigndisplay [config]
Display the specified foreign config or all if no config argument
is provided.
foreignpreview [config]
Preview the specified foreign config after import or all if no
config argument is provided.
foreignimport [config]
Import the specified foreign config or all if no config argument
is provided.
flashfile
Updates the flash on the controller with the firmware stored in
file. A reboot is required for the new firmware to take effect.

EXAMPLES

Configure the cache for volume mfid0 to cache only writes:
mfiutilcachemfid0writesmfiutilcachemfid0write-back
Create a RAID5 array spanning the first four disks in the second enclo-
sure:
mfiutilcreateraid5e1:s0,e1:s1,e1:s2,e1:s4
Configure the first three disks on a controller as JBOD:
mfiutilcreatejbod012
Create a RAID10 volume that spans two arrays each of which contains two
disks from two different enclosures:
mfiutilcreateraid10e1:s0,e1:s1e2:s0,e2:s1
Add drive with the device ID of 4 as a global hot spare:
mfiutiladd4
Add the drive in slot 2 in the main chassis as a hot spare for volume
mfid0:
mfiutiladds2mfid0
Configure the adapter to run periodic patrol reads once a week with the
first patrol read starting in 5 minutes:
mfiutilpatrolauto604800300